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Home , Beverly Sills, Martha Graham

Women in the Arts Roundtable

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Bonnie Oda Homsey (’71, ) was born in Hawaii. As the founding director of Los Angeles Dance Foundation, she curated programs for its touring entity, American Repertory Dance Company, showcasing rarely seen reconstructions of more than 40 masterworks. Homsey serves on the Actors Fund Western Council, which works to establish free youth programming across the disciplines. She teaches career development courses at USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, California Institute for the Arts, and professional workshops. Her article “An Action Plan for Artistic Identity and Career Development,” is published this spring in NDEO’s publication Dance in Practice. A former soloist with the Graham Dance Company, Homsey performed on Broadway, toured domestically and internationally, originated roles with Rudolph Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, and was featured on : Dance in America and Live From Wolf Trap. For 20 years, she served as chair of dance and arts advisory board member for the Princess Grace Foundation USA and served on panels including NEA, NEFA, United States Artists, and California Arts Council. Homsey received her MFA from University of California, Irvine, where she received the Chancellor’s Fellowship.

Brittany Bradford (Group 47, drama) is an actor, producer, and teaching artist who appeared on Broadway in Bernhardt/Hamlet. Off-Broadway, she has appeared in Macbeth (Hunter Theater Project) and Fiasco Theater’s Merrily We Roll Along (Roundabout); other New York and regional appearances include Fefu and Her Friends (Theatre for a New Audience); Guys and Dolls (The Muny); Flyin’ West (Westport Country Playhouse); Family Resemblance (Eugene O’Neill); The Profane and The Taming of the Shrew (Chautauqua Theater Company); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Ten Thousand Things Theatre); Neighbors, Avenue Q, and Next to Normal (Mixed Blood Theatre); and Ragtime and Stick Fly (Park Square Theatre). She will be seen in the upcoming HBOMax series Julia, about world-renowned chef . Bradford was a line producer of African American Policy Forum’s Say Her Name, a company member of Classix, and a co-founder of HomeBase Theatre Collective.

Juilliard faculty member Emi Ferguson (BM ’09, MM ’12, flute; MM ’11, historical performance) can be heard live in concerts and festivals with groups including the Handel and Haydn Society, American Modern Company, New York New Music Ensemble, and Chamber Players. Ferguson’s recordings for Arezzo Music, Fly the Coop: Bach Sonatas and Preludes With Ruckus (2019) and Amour Cruel (2017) were among the top 10 albums on the classical and world music Billboard charts and showcase her fascination with reinvigorating music and instruments of the past for the present. She has spoken and performed at several TEDX events and has been featured on media outlets including the Discovery Channel, Amazon Prime, and Vox discussing how music relates to our world today. Born in Japan and raised in London and Boston, Ferguson resides in New York City. For more information, visit emiferguson.com.

Soprano (BM ’03, MM ’04, voice) continues to establish herself as one of today’s most sought-after singing actors and recitalists. A recipient of the ’s 2010 Artist Award, Phillips has sung at the Met Opera for 12 consecutive seasons, in the roles of Musetta, Pamina, Donna Anna, Rosalinde, Antonia/Stella, Donna Elvira, Fiordiligi, Clémence, Micaëla, and most recently Countess Almaviva. Highly desired by the world’s most esteemed orchestras, Phillips has appeared with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Santa Fe Symphony. Other career highlights include Stella in Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire opposite Renée Fleming, Birdie in Blitzstein’s Regina, and singing at the Washington Performing Arts in a program co-curated by . Phillips co-founded Twickenham Fest, a chamber music festival in her native Huntsville, Alabama, with bassoonist and Huntsville native Matthew McDonald.

Lincoln Center’s emerging artist of 2019, and Detroit native Endea Owens (MM ’18, jazz studies) is a vibrant bassist whose mentors include Marcus Belgrave, Rodney Whitaker, and Ron Carter. She has toured and performed with Jennifer Holliday, Rhonda and Diana Ross, Jazzmeia Horn, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Steve Turre, and Lea DeLaria from the Original Series Orange Is the New Black. Owens has participated in music exchange programs in Cuba and Trinidad and Tobago and performed in numerous other countries. She is the bassist with Juilliard Creative Associate and alumnus Jon Batiste’s Stay Human, which is the house band for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. She has been featured on ABC News (New York) with Sandy Kenyon, as well as ABC’s Here and Now. She has also been featured on The Indie Beat with the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Owens has graced the cover of the Japanese magazine The Walkers and been featured in the Wall Street Journal and Billboard magazine. In June 2020, she founded the Community Cookout, an organization dedicated to distributing hundreds of hot meals and free music concerts to neighborhoods in NYC.

Evan Yionoulis, an Obie award-winning theater director and nationally recognized teacher of acting, is the dean and director of the drama division. She has directed new plays and classics in New York, across the country, and internationally, including Adrienne Kennedy’s He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box (world premiere) and Ohio State Murders (Lortel Award, best revival) for Theatre for a New Audience, Richard Greenberg’s The Violet Hour (Broadway), Three Days of Rain (Manhattan Theatre Club), and Everett Beekin ( Theater), and, during her 20 years as a resident director at Yale Repertory Theatre, productions including Richard II, Cymbeline, Brecht’s Galileo, Ibsen’s The Master Builder, and Guillermo Calderón’s Kiss. She serves as president of the executive board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.